Our website is since yesterday totally mobile accessible. We have made some changes which allows mobile device users to easily access and surf our website. These changes were also made in the preparation of our 2012waic mobile application, which will be available by the conference.

Later this week we’ll put more information about the program on the website. We will also update the partner page with more detailed and up-to-date information. So keep an eye on the website!

KENNETH J. GERGEN is a Senior Research Professor at Swarthmore College, and President of the Taos Institute. He has served as president of two divisions of the American Psychological Association, and the Associate Editor of both the American Psychologist, and Theory and Psychology. Gergen has been a major contributor to social constructionist theory and organizational change practices. Among his major works are Realities and relationships, soundings in social construction; The Saturated Self; An invitation to social construction; An Invitation to Social Construction; and most recently, Relational being, beyond self and community. Gergen’s work has received numerous awards, including fellowships, foundation awards, and honorary degrees in both Europe and the U.S.

Motivated by the Dennis Meadows 1972 report to the Club of Rome on the Limits to Growth, KLAAS VAN EGMOND worked since then as environmental scientist in support of national, European and global policies. As director of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, he has been advisor to the Dutch government on the many scientific and technological issues in the field of environment, global change and sustainability. During that long period he has learned that the solution for the sustainability problem has to be found in social and cultural dynamics, rather than in technological development only. Lack of consensus in the understanding of human nature allows societies to degenerate into its own caricature and associated catastrophe, by one sided overexposure of genuine human value orientations. Sustainability can only be achieved by understanding and discouragement of this recurring mechanism. It implies encouragement of policies and political structures that recognize human and societal virtue in between materialistic and spiritual/ cultural values, and in between egocentric and collectivistic orientations. Sustainability is synonimous with human dignity; the recognition of genuine human values.

Some days ago we announced that we were so happy having received 161 proposals at the end of the submission period. So many AI practitioners, researchers, organisational leaders & students who are enthusiast to share their best stories at the fifth World AI Conference.

Today we like to give you a first update about the actual participants registrations: 4,5 month before the conference dates, we have 138 registered participants! Already a beautiful mix of people from all over the world. A strong base to build further on. It gives us confidence to design and co-create a beautiful program. Shortly we will post more information about program & keynotes.

Meanwhile your support in making the 2012 WAIC a success is most welcome. Feel free to invite friends & colleagues to join you and help us in scaling-up the World Appreciative Inquiry Conference. We have seen how social media are already being intensively used to communicate about the conference. You can find the WAIC page at Facebook, use Twitter with #2012WAIC, or help people to find the conference website at www.2012waic.org.

We are very happy to announce the name of our first keynote speaker. David L. Cooperrider is the Fairmount Minerals Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Professor Cooperrider is past President of the National Academy of Management’s OD Division and has lectured and taught at Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, and Katholieke University in Belgium, MIT, University of Michigan, Cambridge and the Drucker School of Management. David is Faculty Chair of the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value.

Last week we concluded the online proposal submission. We are now very happy and proud to announce 161 submitted proposals from all over the world. We wish to thank the AI practitioners, researchers, organizational leaders & students for their enthusiasm and high quality submission. We will now take a few weeks to review all proposals with the international advisory board.

Working as a member of the organizing committee towards the AI Worldconference in april 2012, I was touched in a positive way feeling that several developments seem to come together the last couple of weeks. I like to share these developments and bring them to your attention, as they are for me examples of scaling-up the generative power of AI.

A meeting of the Begeistring Network (the European Network around Appreciative Inquiry and Strength Based Change) took place in the beginning of November in Manchester. Twice a year, this network has a meeting. This time 30 practitioners from all over Europe met and shared their AI experiences within the inspiring theme ‘Awakening within, awakening without’. The network meeting was connected with the Grundtvig conference (32 participants). The Grundtvig project is initiated by 8 members of the European network with the purpose to share, develop and spread the use of appreciative, strength based change and learning approaches within Europa & is funded by the European Commission.

During the last few days there is an online dialogue going on to see how the original network of AI learners in the US – AI Consulting – could be connected more with the Begeistring Network. It would be great to end up with a worldwide Appreciative Inquiry community on a global basis, where the European network Begeistring is part of, as are the US, Asian, African and every other continents and countries AI networks. Let’s go for it and scale up the generative power of AI! The AI Worldconference in april 2012 is a great meetingplace to make this happen. Are you also coming….?

We invited researchers, practitioners, organisational leaders & students to submit proposals for the 5th World AI Conference. The aim is to build a highly interactive conference, in which there is ample space to share & deepen best stories around the theme of this worldwide event: “Towards an ‘economy’ of connecting strengths: scaling-up the generative power of AI”.

Today we are pleased and proud to announce that there are a large number of proposals submitted. Not only there are over 120 proposals, they are also almost equally divided between the four subthemes we outlined in our call. This result is really exciting and shows the global interest to exchange, learn & create together. Thank you all for your enthusiasm: we highly appreciate it.

At the same time the last couple of hours, from different parts of the world, we received requests of people who are very eager still to submit their proposal. In this we see the possibilities to use the richness of our worldwide community at its full potential. Therefore we decided to extend the period for submission with exactly one week: until 21 November. After this date the online abstract submission will be closed.

Monday 14th of November will be remembered. It was not only the last day for submitting proposals (thanks for so many reactions!). We also counted no less than 725 unique views on the different pages. 725 unique visitors out of 67 different countries. Thereby is the 14th of November our busiest and most international day on the website. Based on these data we are even more motivated to make #2012waic a very powerful and international conference. See you all there!

The World AI Conference is a venue were researchers, practitioners, organisational leaders & students share and explore stories and practices demonstrating the connecting and generative power of AI.

We plan for a highly interactive workshop based format. The program will consist of a diversity of workshops, paper presentations, symposia & poster sessions.

Therefore please feel invited to submit proposals of your best stories which illustrate and deepen the theme of this worldwide event: “Towards an ‘economy’ of connecting strengths: scaling-up the generative power of AI”.